Calling all Georgia parents, advocates, teachers and activists! There is a hearing on this bill at 2:00 pm tomorrow, January 25, at the Georgia Capitol Building in Atlanta. Click here for more information on this legislation or to comment.

Senator Johnson has proposed Senate Bill 10, which would provide scholarships for public school students with disabilities to attend private schools. It’s an enticing concept…and in theory a possibly good idea. Fashioned after the McKay Scholarship in Florida, SB 10 states that” The scholarship program is for the valid secular purpose of tailoring a student’s education to that student’s specific needs and enabling families to make genuine and independent private choices to direct their resources to appropriate schools.”

Sounds good…BUT…

The bill is clear, to obtain the “scholarship” parents must forfeit their child’s rights and protections guaranteed by federal laws for children with disabilities who attend public school. This could be troublesome.

The figure being kicked around is $7000 a year per student. The bill itself doesn’t say this per se. The two potential problems with this that parents and educators seem to point out is that most private schools that accept children with special needs have an annual tuition higher than $7000. This means that only those who could afford the difference would be able to take advantage of the scholarship.

Parents of special needs children are flocking to meetings and websites to learn more. Many are praising the legislation….some, however, are not.

I’m leaning to the NOT side. I’m not one for signing away my child’s IDEA rights easily. And, because of our current due process case, I’m well aware that a private school education for LuLu will cost significantly more than $7000 a year. Given those parameters, this legislation looks to benefit only those families who are either already affording the private school tuition or could afford it.

If we look closely at what has gone on with Georgia’s McKay Scholarship, we find that many parents did have out-of-pocket expenses to send their children to private schools under the voucher program. And that in rural areas there were little choices for disabled children as far as private school options. And private schools are free to discriminate o the basis of religion, gender or type of disability (uh-oh…that would limit LuLu’s choices for sure!)

What about the public schools? Are they for or against? I don’t really know. I could see that some are already calculating how fast they can issue vouchers to the challenging children they would like out of their systems. But the reality is each voucher comes out of the schools’ funds for special education. And it lessens the amount available to spend on the children left in the public schools…in other words, a drop in the quality of special education in the public school could occur if the voucher program was large enough.

Anyway – parents of special children in Georgia – learn about SB 10 and then voice your opinion.

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